


And The Melody Lingers On

by sharkie



Category: Political RPF - US 20th c.
Genre: Hate Sex, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Unreliable Narrator, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:34:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21868327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkie/pseuds/sharkie
Summary: An excerpt from an unpublished Vidal essay.
Relationships: William F. Buckley Jr./Gore Vidal
Comments: 12
Kudos: 21
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	And The Melody Lingers On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [libraralien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/libraralien/gifts).



“I really loved _Julian_ ,” Buckley whispered to me in Miami, softly, the first and last sweet nothing he would utter during our infamously distasteful encounters. “Though I have no question of where your sympathies lay, whether you intended it or not, you perfectly portrayed an egocentrist with no fear of God and the fate which awaits him.” 

“Why, thank you, Bill.” I smiled. “If you feel that strongly, then you’ll love _Myra Breckinridge._ ” 

He hated it. 

For twelve nights in total, we ‘debated’ each other on national television. I say ‘debate’ nominally because it consisted of me building coherent arguments around proven facts while Buckley squawked and flapped ineffectually. I’d compare our verbal sparring to playing chess against a pigeon, except a homing pigeon is capable of delivering a coherent message and is, by definition, far from hawkish. Familiarity breeds contempt. Imagine what it does to a foundation of animosity. It builds hatred higher than Babel. Ideology in particular is more intimate than family ties or long-term friendships - after all, we largely choose ideology. And national television allows wounded egos to fester into raging personas. Is it any wonder that things escalated as they did? 

But enough about politics for now. Let’s discuss its less bombastic cousin: sex. 

I prefer my men sporty and stupid, reasonably compliant, nicer than I am. (The latter isn’t hard.) If I can really talk to a man, I’d rather not fuck him. There have been exceptions - statistically, an inevitability - but never anyone extraordinary enough to break my rule for long. 

Then there was my opponent. Buckley. Bill. Bill, with his unwieldy spiteful intellectualism and flagrant neuroses. Bill, who was passably handsome in lighting dimmer than his true intelligence, nothing to ogle; Bill, whose only truly remarkable physical feature was the watery blueness of his eyes. Many people have drowned in them. I mused, I would like to pour them out and drink their contents while he watched. Hollow-eyed. 

After that first night in Miami, he had whispered, “You’ll be sorry.” Oh, I would be. If you asked Buckley, for all the wrong reasons. 

Between conventions, he read _Myra._ I read him with less care and with greater comprehension. Someday you may learn that before the debates, I had planned a number of witty ripostes and put-downs, tailor made for Buckley. _Was the subsequent seduction also planned?_ scholars will ask. Of course it was.

Let me set the record straight: I do not focus upon conquest. In that area I cannot possibly hope to rival America. In Buckley I saw a compelling challenge, yes, but more importantly, _I_ was seen by _Buckley_. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - he hated to see me, but though it likely escaped his notice, he desperately longed to hold me. Throughout our debates I made it a point to fact-check my opponent. In a similar sense, I took it upon myself to liberate him from the boredom of self-denial.

It was so easy to miss for anyone ignorant about the signals - which was almost everyone at ABC, back then. But not to Buckley. Not to his New York social circle. Not to the deepest recesses of his shriveled brain, compulsively at war, likely with itself. A condescending touch here, a too-long glance there; the rare compliment (always backhanded), the rarer smile. How he despised it! How he cherished it! 

* * *

My back met the dressing room door. Sweat plastered hair to my forehead - the unseemly result of stage lights, intellectual exertion, and a queasy sense of exhilaration which I admittedly had not felt in ages. 

_“Listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”_

Buckley had started to rise - to deliver said punch? On _air?_ I bit back a moan and pressed the heel of my palm to my growing arousal, only to growl and tear my hand away. I needed a _man,_ damn it…

Then: knocking. A familiar voice. Initially I wondered if my morbid desires had manifested a suspiciously accurate auditory hallucination, but gradually, it grew in loudness and desperation until its origin became unmistakable. 

_Oh, Bill, you are too extraordinary._

I opened the door. Bill Buckley stood there, scowling and blushing before me like a scolded schoolboy, then lumbered into my domain with the grace of the oldest of doddering dinosaurs which his party courts. He did not speak until I had determined that the hallway was empty and shut the door. 

“Does anyone know you’re here?” I questioned. 

“No.”

Silence moderated the pause more effectively than our debates had been. 

“I believe apologies are in order,” said Buckley, his voice barely above a whisper. 

“I’ll go first,” I said, mildly. “For the most part, I doubt you’re a crypto-Nazi. Only a crypto-fascist. I’m deeply sorry for my semantic misstep.”

Buckley’s expression oscillated between fury and disbelief. His characteristically oily sweat had slathered away his powder, so I could see that his shade of red also transitioned from a light flush of crimson fluster to scarlet-siren rage. He took a deep breath. 

“I shouldn’t have called you...that,” said Buckley. “While your own remark was terrible and totally unwarranted, mine was ugly and malicious. I’m sorry.” 

My first impulse was to reject him. My second was to accept, and slam the door in his face. 

“Why _that,_ of all names?” I asked. “Why not a communist, a Vietcong-cocksucker, something along those lines?” 

“Because I know about your lifestyle, and I wanted the insult to be true.” That was a first, I thought. “And I was under the impression that you had been....” What? Flirting? Perish the thought. He swallowed, and made an admirable, if doomed, attempt to collect himself. “Nothing. Never mind.” 

“Actually, you were right, Bill. Just about that.” I smiled. He gawped. It was most unbecoming. “That is, in a matter of substance, not categorisation. I am what the label describes, albeit never the label itself, and certainly not the derogatory weight you put behind it. There is nothing to ‘admit’. It has never been a secret. And I am telling you purely because no sane soul will ever believe that you slinked into my dressing room at - ” I checked my watch. “10:48 p.m, on August 28th, 1968, to admit your wrongdoing - deference is, after all, such a rare and miraculous occurrence for those who share your politics, as is _sharing_ for those who share your politics. Anyway, as I was saying, they won’t believe that _you,_ of all people, should approach me, and that I, of all people, should corroborate your hasty, venomous assessment with a sly wink and - ”

“Mr. Vidal.”

How odd, I thought. People typically don’t say each other’s names prior to throwing a punch.

Buckley stayed rooted to the spot, fists clenching and unclenching. 

“Do you always talk this much when you’re aroused?” he spat. 

I watched his face; careful, appraising. “I always talk this much.” 

Disgust dominated his milky expression, though I could not pinpoint its truest source nor direction. I approached as one would approach a wounded wild animal, well-aware of how quickly our positions could reverse. He didn’t allow me to elaborate. 

His lips were chapped, wet, ungainly. In other words, kissing him was like being slapped with a dying fish. Sticking my tongue into his mouth was like being forced to eat it. As any passably observant person could predict, his own tongue proved bolder than his concept of foreign policy. 

Across the vast realm of human experience, people report that in life-or-death situations, one finds the greatest clarity to reflect upon oneself. Here, lips locked with the foe of the moment, I was placing my head in the greatest lion’s maw - ‘greatest’, that is, in terms of stature, roar, and pride, not commendable virtues. 

My life flashed before my eyes. It was full of segmented intimacy. Always adding, never complete. Never whole. I am accustomed to sexless love and loveless sex. Do not mistake my clinical phrasing for despair. I cherish it, in a way: a perfect balance when mastered. But hate? Oh, there is an exquisite totality in hate. A solid constancy. 

Meanwhile, Buckley groped downwards in a grotesque mishmash of appropriately robotic movement and all-too painful humanity. He struggled to undo my fly. 

“Must I hold your hand?” I demanded. 

Buckley scowled. I wanted to push him onto his back and ride him. Then I wanted to stand without a word, leave him hard and wanting. Or, even better, make him beg to come, make him beg not to come, make him come and come and come the way no good moralist wife could, until all of Chicago knew that it takes one to know one and I had known this one in a Biblical sense, a Greek sense, and in the wake of a month’s nonsense. I wanted to kiss him properly. I wanted to unravel his self-loathing and wind the ribbons around his prick and fuck him so the fabric of his integrity slapped against his balls. All this, I considered confessing. But I held my tongue, aware that it is extraordinarily difficult to mount a spooked horse. 

We undressed ourselves and, occasionally, each other; any angrier, and we would've removed skin. Eventually my questing hand discovered that Buckley's interpersonal aggression was not a product of overcompensation but overestimation. He moaned when he touched me. I began to suspect that he would fuck like he spouted syntax: perilously sure, yet meandering, meaningless. 

“That deplorable filth you write,” he panted, “it’s never tender. Have you never been shown tenderness?” 

“I have never been _bad at sex_ , no.” I gripped his prick tightly, gave it a few perfunctory tugs before withdrawing. He made a hurt sound, then bit his lip, chastised by some internal conflict. “Now turn around.”

Buckley baulked, but complied, grumbling. 

“Part your thighs,” I said, and shoved him onto my couch. 

I spat into my hand and jerked my prick while watching the rise and fall of Buckley's bare ass. I did my best to ignore his whines. There was a certain sensual detachment to it, like fondling a marble statue's buttocks, not that Bill Buckley had the sort of physique one would wish to memorialize. 

Without preamble, I braced myself above him and slid my prick firmly between his thighs. He let out a startled sound, followed by another as I began thrusting in earnest. I pinned his wrist with one hand and reached for his prick with the other. It was dripping, and felt harder than Buckley's head. I idly wondered whether our earlier argument had affected him as much as it had affected me.

I am proud to say that I chased my pleasure with little regard for his needs. My hand on his prick only curled or stroked as ripples of my enjoyment. I believe it was one of the few times where _laissez-faire_ fucking occurred between two men of our socioeconomic caliber instead of between _The National Review_ 's readership and the rest of the world. We spoke, barely. He communicated his satisfaction through appropriately Neanderthalic grunts. I replied with my palm landing hard on his ass. We didn't utter each other's names, except as admonishments. 

Unlike his reptilian demeanor would suggest, Buckley's flesh was warm, almost clammy. Against my better judgement, this excited me, and I fucked him faster between his legs. In turn, he jerked upwards, attempting to meet my vigor with the same clumsy responsiveness which had cost him the debates.

Alas, our encounter ended too quickly for the typical sexual liaison, yet it was still too much time spent in his company. I twisted my fingers in the most elementary of motions as I humped his back. Spasmodic ecstasy wracked his entire wretched body. I was fortunate not to witness his undoubtedly gaping maw while he flailed. Perhaps he meant to shout, but it sounded more like a squawk. Instinctively, he attempted to wriggle from my grasp - as worms do - but my grip persisted as I drove my prick back into that profane space between his squirming thighs, leaving myself buried for the final thrusts so I could spend on his skin. I lingered only to gouge my fingernails deeper into his hips, to mark them. Then I released him. 

Buckley scrambled to his feet, catching his breath. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. His gaze traversed my frame with unspeakable regret and, I believe, a hint of jealousy. 

“You must be terribly unhappy,” he said. Like Achilles into his tent or the Allies from Dunkirk, immediately post-climax he had gloriously retreated - into the power of his own pity - as if he hadn’t just gotten off by rutting his cock in another man’s hand. 

“You weren’t _that_ horrible,” I countered. It wasn’t a total lie. 

He huffed and puffed and speedily righted his clothing, and exited without so much as another glance. We didn't converse any further outside the remaining debate. That was more than satisfactory to me. After all, I had enticed the cuckoo to sing its song, and the melody lingers on. 


End file.
